Keith’s Blog: Happy 50th Birthday to the Super

An aficionado of Alfas with four doors, Andrew helped me locate the SCM Super a few years ago.

According to the Alfa Romeo Documentation Center, our Super was born on February 13, 1967. It was sold two days later, on February 15th, to Alfa Romeo Inc. of Newark, New Jersey.

It’s chassis number, AR 342327, is just sixteen cars earlier than Watry’s (AR 342343) Super, so chances are that half-a-century ago these two family sedans moved down the assembly line at the Alfa factory in Arese, Italy nearly nose-to-tail.

If cars could talk, think what stories they could tell. These Supers were born into a world without safety and smog regulations. When built, they were in a class of their own as high-performance sports sedans. Equipped with the same 1600cc double-overhead cam engine, Weber carburetors and five-speed gearbox as the sportier GTV, the Super was advertised as “the family car that wins races.”

Today, of course, nearly every entry-level econobox can out-handle, out-accelerate and out-brake these vintage machines.

Four years ago, when I began looking for a Super, Andrew found this one for me. It belonged to long-time Alfista Dr. Timothy Rogers in Santa Barbara. He owned two, one for him and one for his wife.

While not a concours car by any means, it was extremely straight. It appeared that it had never been hit, and even more important, had never been rusty.

These are both keys to the longevity of old cars. Built in an era when rust-proofing wasn’t even a notion, many of them simply disintegrated over the years. As their conditions declined, so did their values. I recall buying and selling more than a few running and driving Supers for under $1,000 in the 1980s. After all, for most sports car enthusiasts, a four-door sedan just wasn’t very sexy.

Our Super is best described as “an honest car.” While stock in appearance, the Super has benefited from a variety of typical “boy-racer” upgrades, including a two-liter engine, bigger brakes, front-and-rear sway bars, Bilsteins, Rugh springs, and 14-inch wheels.

All of the distinctive trim bits are with the car, including the two-piece front grille that disappeared in 1968.

The trip we took with the two kids in the back seat was a magical journey. They sat with their coolers full of treats and drinks, and iPads plugged in. We hustled along, keeping up and passing other cars on the tour, including a Maserati Ghibli, several square-tail Spiders and a Datsun 1600 roadster. It was as if we had gone back in time half-a-century.

We could have been on a two-lane country road in Italy — two adults and two kids enjoying “the family car that wins races.”

To the kids, it wasn’t a vintage road trip. It was just a chance to spend time in the (very spacious) back seat of a fun car, sharing the fold-down center armrest and chatting away.

I would guess that the design life of a 1967 Alfa was under a decade. By 1977, a 1967 car had been superseded by at least one or more new models (in the case of the Super, it was two — the Berlina and the Alfetta sedan, both severely compromised in the U.S. by federal smog and safety regulations).

Today, my and Andrew’s Supers are vintage artifacts, a visual spectacle as they motor along.

The chances are slim that 50 years from today these cars will be allowed into the mix of every-day 2067 traffic. Between their lack of autonomous features, their status as gross polluters and their absence of airbags and other safety devices, they will simply be unsuited for the modern-car mix of the future.

So be sure to celebrate the half-century anniversaries of the cars in your collections. They were advanced when new, and are still capable of holding their own on secondary roads today.

But increasingly, they are mobile relics of a time gone by, and represent a motoring experience that is fast disappearing. We are fortunate to have lived in the golden age of the motorcar.

Andrew’s Super, born the same day as SCM’s car

Sold new in Berkeley, always a CA car

Lovely interior on Andrew’s car

SCM Super in vinyl

Distinctive large gauges

Kid-friendly back seat

Two-liter engine in SCM Super with Euro air intake

SCM Super in Joseph, Oregon

Lake Wallowa

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Keith Martin has been involved with the collector car hobby for more than 30 years. As a writer, publisher, television commentator and enthusiast, he is constantly on the go, meeting collectors and getting involved in their activities throughout the world. He is the founder and publisher of the monthly Sports Car Market and bi-monthly American Car Collector magazines, has written for the New York Times, Automobile, AutoWeek, Road & Track and other publications, is an emcee for numerous concours, and has his own show, “What’s My Car Worth,” shown on Velocity.

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1 comments

You raise a big (and depressing) question at the end of your post – how long will we be allowed to drive our classics on the street, what with the (inevitable?) arrival of autonomous cars, and increasingly stringent emissions regs?

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